Friday, 8 March 2013

If you don’t know
about ‘Frugal Innovation and the Bottom
of the Pyramid (BoP)’ here’s a
quick précis.

Basically, there 4
billion people on the planet living in a spectrum of relative-to-absolute
poverty. That within that BoP 4-billion, sits approximately 1 billion people living on under 2
dollars a day ($730 per year).

So just over a decade
ago the late Prof. C.K Prahalad proclaimed that the
best way to tackle poverty at the $2
dollars a day BoP, is to fight it by turning it into a profit centred market-space.
A worldwide market worth 7.3 trillion dollars!

Prahalad Hyperlogic is this: if you innovate life
subsistence and enabling products and sell them at a price the BoP can afford and still
make a return, then you set off a virtuous circle. People at the BoP begin you
climb the wall of the Pyramid and out of crisis.

Well that is the
first step in the BoP innovation equation.

A further step is slightly – or fantastically - more ambitious: to innovate systems of
technologies and tools that build basic infrastructure development that supplies clean water and
foods, habitats and agriculture systems, etc, that the BoP can invest in through micro-loans and community pooling investures.

Well, it never ceases
to amaze me on my research into Innovating
to enable the BOP, and I recently came across these guys: ‘Open Source Ecology (OSE).’

OSE explain:

‘Open Source Ecology is a network
of farmers, engineers, and supporters that for the last two years has been
creating the Global
Village Construction Set, an open source, low-cost, high performance
technological platform that allows for the easy, DIY fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that
it takes to build a sustainable civilization with modern comforts. The GVCS
lowers the barriers to entry into farming, building, and manufacturing and can be seen
as a life-size Lego-like set of modular tools that can create entire economies, whether in
rural Missouri, where the project was founded, in urban redevelopment, or in
the developing world.’

OSE
was founded by Marcin JAKUBOWSKI in 2003 and true Hyperinnovator. His ambition is ‘closed-loop
manufacturing a reality.’ His main focus is ‘evolving to freedom by
eliminating resource scarcity as the main force behind human relations - with
the wise use of modern technology adapted for human service.’

And
this is OSE strategy.

‘The Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) is an open
technological platform that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different
Industrial Machines that it takes to build a small civilization with
modern comforts. Key Features of the
GVCS: Open Source – Low Cost Modular – user Service able – DIY – Closed-Loop
Manufacturing – Heirloom Design – Flexible Fabrication.’

OSE
say:

‘A modern, comfortable lifestyle relies
on a variety of efficient Industrial Machines. If you eat bread, you rely on an
Agricultural Combine. If you live in a wood house, you rely on a Sawmill. Each
of these machines relies on other machines in order for it to exist. If you distill this complex web of
interdependent machines [Hyperinnovation] into a reproduceable, simple,
closed-loop system, you get these:’

‘The GVCS 50’ in development; 50 tools to
realise their goals.

3 examples:

3D Printer: an additive manufacturing technology where a three
dimensional object is printed by laying down successive layers of material,
just like a printer except in 3D.

3D Scanner A device that can generate a 3D
digital scan from a real-life object, where the file can be used to reproduce
the object in 3D with a device such as the 3D printer or CNC Precision
Multimachine.

‘Download
the CAD data here and the
entire set of CEB Press documentation can be found here, in addition
to the assembly videos. Please watch and download them and drop us a line to
let us know what you thought. Were the videos easy to follow along? Think the
instructions fell short? Were they useful? Do you have suggestions for how to
make them better? We look forward to your feedback.’

OSE Guys, I am truly humbled.

Your project is amazing. Thrilling, actually...It's people like you who really give me hope for the future.

Wednesday, 6 March 2013

The End is Nigh!

What does a self-consistent, intelligent and capable person do? Which
goals are so sound, so promising and so exciting that you can allow those goals
to fully motivate you? Which goals can you embrace in the knowledge that you
stand on a firm foundation, that your thinking is clear, and that you can be a
pioneer to excel in a significant part of a vast new future?

What is more important to you:
competitive patterns of thought or a sequence of DNA? Ultimately, there is
no inherent reason to be more attached to the sequence of nucleotides
that defines the human form than to the one that defines the form of an
ant. The part that is interesting to us is the emergent world of thought and
perception.

If you would like to see a future that includes improvements
beyond our species’ status-quo, then you should work on a transhumanist
strategy that optimizes pattern survival and competition, namely work on
substrate-independent minds and mind uploading. There are signs of a shift from
gene-survival to pattern-survival, and Universal Darwinism favors the pattern
competition winners.

Of all the transhumanist strategies, advancing substrate-independent
minds (ASIM) is both connected with its originating human interests and it most
directly embraces and plays the game of competitive natural selection.

Working with bioengineers and neurosurgeons, Daniel Lim, a neurosurgeon and stem-cell scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, has designed a needle that bends for for delivering stem cells to the brain,

The device can deposit cells anywhere within a 2-centimetre radius along a track, a volume bigger than an entire mouse brain.

Several researchers hope to use Lim’s device for clinical trials in brain cancer and neurodegenerative disease.

Lim’s device could cut down on the number of injections required for cell treatments and give more precise control of the volume of cells delivered and ensure that the cells delivered into the brain stay in the brain, avoiding the problem of reflux, in which cells injected using straight needles flow back out to the brain surface along the needle’s path.

Also, unlike other needles used for cell therapies, Lim’s device contains no ferromagnetic metals and so is compatible with MRI.

It is possible to tell who a person is thinking about by analyzing images of his or her brain.

Our mental models of people produce unique patterns of brain activation, which can be detected using advanced imaging techniques according to a study by Cornell University neuroscientist Nathan Spreng and his colleagues.

“When we looked at our data, we were shocked that we could successfully decode who our participants were thinking about based on their brain activity,” said Spreng, assistant professor of human development in Cornell’s College of Human Ecology.

Understanding and predicting the behavior of others is a key to successfully navigating the social world, yet little is known about how the brain actually models the enduring personality traits that may drive others’ behavior, the authors say. Such ability allows us to anticipate how someone will act in a situation that may not have happened before.

To learn more, the researchers asked 19 young adults to learn about the personalities of four people who differed on key personality traits. Participants were given different scenarios (such as sitting on a bus when an elderly person gets on and there are no seats) and asked to imagine how a specified person would respond. During the task, their brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow.

They found that different patterns of brain activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) were associated with each of the four different personalities. In other words, which person was being imagined could be accurately identified based solely on the brain activation pattern.

The results suggest that the brain codes the personality traits of others in distinct brain regions and this information is integrated in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) to produce an overall personality model used to plan social interactions, the authors say.

“Prior research has implicated the anterior mPFC in social cognition disorders such as autism and our results suggest people with such disorders may have an inability to build accurate personality models,” said Spreng. “If further research bears this out, we may ultimately be able to identify specific brain activation biomarkers not only for diagnosing such diseases, but for monitoring the effects of interventions.”

Eureka! Intelligent tyre sensors measures vehicle weight

RightLeft

Continental Auto Design Engineers are working to develop a tyre pressure monitoring system that can accurately calculate the weight of a vehicle.

In the past, it was more or less up to drivers to guesstimate to the best of their abilities whether or not the maximum permitted payload of a car had already been reached, says Andreas Wolf, who heads up the company's body and security group.

Future vehicles will be able to tell the driver whether the payload has already exceeded the maximum permitted limit, or whether the tyre pressure would simply need to be adjusted accordingly. In this way, our tyre pressure sensors will not only help to save fuel, but also offer active assistance in terms of vehicle safety.

The ContiPressureCheck system will rely on sensors that can accurately detect the size of the contact patch where the tyre meets the road.

By registering the rolling characteristics of the tyre with every revolution, and taking into account the existing tyre pressure and data about how the tyres are fitted, Wolf says the system will be able to ascertain the vehicles weight after just a few hundred meters of driving.

This data would then be relayed wirelessly to the driver, informing them whether they have exceeded the recommended payload for the vehicle, or whether the tyre pressure should be adjusted.

The 10 Smartest People Alive Today

Judging how smart a person is can be a very subjective matter. Does their IQ score make them the smartest? Or is it more about accomplishments? The debate over this likely will never cease. Below, though, SuperScholar.orgtook a look at 10 people (in no particular order) nobody would deny are worthy of being called some of the smartest people alive today.

Fifty percent of people have IQ scores between 90 and 110, 2.5 percent of people are mentally deficient/impaired (under 70 IQ), 0.5 percent of people are near genius or genius (over 140,) 2.5 percent of people are very superior in intelligence (over 130).

Richard Oreffo, a
professor of Musculoskeletal Science at the University of Southamptonin
England, and colleagues have created a blend of three plastics that is tough
yet highly porous. This may make it an ideal "scaffold" for a broken
bone – a placeholder structure that can be replaced with real bone tissue
as the body heals.

The polymer
"has this lovely honeycomb structure," Oreffo said. That allows
living cells to "crawl all over it. Blood vessels can
penetrate it. So it's really nice."

Oreffo's team has
tested the polymer using mice that had parts of their femur bones removed. The
hole was of a size “that won't heal normally," he said. "We can put
these scaffolds into that [gap] and look at their repair over four to eight
weeks."

When the scaffold
was seeded with human bone stem cells,
the bone healed faster, but even without the stem cells, the mice's bones began
to fill in along the scaffolding structure.

In humans, the
structure should serve to repair bone breaks that are too severe to heal on
their own. "If you've had a car accident where you've had significant bone
breaks … ideally, you want your own stem cells in there," Oreffo said.
"This is a real opportunity: A scaffold that can be colonized with the
patient's own stem cells."

In fact, given
enough time, the new material should fully degrade inside a living body,
leaving the repaired bone to stand alone.

The scaffold
material is a blend of chitosan (derived from shrimp shells), polyvinyl acetate
(also a component in Elmer's Glue) and poly-L-lactide, a biodegradable polymer
already used in medical applications.

Researchers
worldwide are pursuing approaches to healing bones using mixtures of scaffolds
and stem cells. A group in Washington state made bone shapes out of a ceramic
powder by using a 3D printer; another method involves creating artificial bones
in a vacuum out of elastic polymers and nanoparticles.

"It's too
early to say one is better than the other. We're looking at a whole range of
approaches," Oreffo said. But, he added, his team’s latest approach has the
advantage of being successful in animal trials.

Monday, 4 March 2013

The Mad Billionaire Behind GoPro

The World's Hottest Camera Company

Nick Woodman is 37 years old. His
constantly tousled sepia hair and permanent, mischievous half-grin make him
look 27. And he acts 17, as I learn 30,000 feet above the Rocky Mountains,
after Woodman packed me, his wife, Jill, and a dozen of his favorite colleagues
and buds into a chartered Gulfstream III en route to Montana’s Yellowstone
Club, the most exclusive ski hill in the U.S.

Already hopped up on Red Bull, tempered
by a liter of coconut water, Woodman darts about the cabin, occasionally
breaking conversation to unleash his trademark excited wail that friends liken
to a foghorn. “YEEEEEEEEEEEEEOW.” A flight attendant emerges with breakfast on
a silver platter. “You know what the best thing about morning ski trips are?”
he asks the cabin rhetorically. “McDonald’s!” And with that he inhales a
McGriddle in all of three bites.

The
man-teen routine is more than an act: It’s the recipe for how he’s become one
of America’s newest and youngest billionaires.
A decade ago Woodman craved a camera he could strap to his wrist so that his
buddies could see his surfing exploits. The result is now a consumer phenomenon
called GoPro, America’s fastest-growing digital imaging company.

Go
anywhere active these days, whether it’s the mountains of Vail or the
scuba-diving depths of Honolulu’s Hanauma Bay, and you’re bound to see a GoPro
or 20. Kids these days don’t film their wave rides or half-pipe tricks. They
GoPro them, strapping the $200 to $400 cameras to helmets, handlebars and
surfboards. The cinema-grade, panoramic “point-of-view” footage that comes out
of a GoPro transforms mere mortals into human highlight reels, without blowing
a huge hole in the budget. Shaun White, who says he used to tape old cameras to
his hand, used GoPros on his runs during the Winter X Games. Hollywood
directors, including Michael Bay, keep
crates of them on set. The NFL has tested them in their end zone pylons to
capture touchdown replays. The Rolling Stones deployed them on stage. Police
forces and the U.S. military have started to incorporate the cameras into
training exercises. Woodman, who calls it a “life” camera, proved the point by
wearing one on his chest at the deliveries of his sons. On the plane to
Montana, Woodman’s GoPro crew rigged their devices in every cranny in the
cabin, including on the pilots’ heads, to document their journey.

GoPro
sales have more than doubled every year since the first camera’s debut in 2004.
In 2012 the company sold 2.3 million cameras and grossed $521 million,
according to Woodman; with $100 million in sales in January alone, that annual
figure should again double this year. For the month of December GoPro was the
highest-grossing digital imaging brand at Best Buy, knocking out Sony for
the first time in the chain’s history. Just ten years old, GoPro was
responsible for 21.5% of digital camcorder shipments nationwide in the first
half of 2012, according to IDC data. Among “pocket camcorders” that figure
swells to a third.

This
type of growth and niche dominance have made for a “rad” business proposition,
with Chinese electronics manufacturer Hon Hai PrecisionIndustry
Co., better known as Foxconn, making a $200 million investment in GoPro in
December. That valued the San Mateo, Calif. firm at $2.25 billion and shot
Woodman, who sources say still owns about 45% of the company, onto the FORBES
World Billionaires list with a net worth of $1.3 billion.

It’s a head-spinning turn of events for
a 37-year-old Peter Pan running a billion-dollar technology company. As he
barrels through Yellowstone’s freshly groomed powder in a pea-green helmet,
it’s clear he’s found bliss. “YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEOW,” he howls from his bloodied
and chapped lips as he GoPros his every turn.